


how strong i have become

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Found Families, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, new 52/rebirth what new 52/rebirth, rating is for language and language only
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-03-30 03:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19033444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: Steph's been kidnapped and has a suspicious gap in her memory. Enter two weirdos who are traveling together--back to Gotham. Now all she has to do is go back with them. Piece of cake.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was all going to be one piece, but since it was getting pretty long I broke it up. I think it'll be three parts in the end, but we shall see. 
> 
> Title is from "Praying" by Kesha, because I feel like it's a Steph song & a Jason song.

Steph wakes up. 

 

She’s in a bed, the covers pooled loosely around her waist. She shifts to her side and groans in pain. Her ribs hurt, and her back hurts, and her shoulder hurts, and her legs hurt, and her wrists hurt, and her head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton. Her vision blurs. 

 

She tries to bring the room back into focus. It’s a bright room with white walls. Gauzy white curtains flutter in the stale breeze from the open window. There’s a nightstand next to the bed with a glass of water on it and Steph moves the arm that’s not trapped under her side and reaches for it. 

 

The water is room-temperature, but delicious and just a little bit of it makes her head feel clearer. She sets the water back on the stand and braces herself, twisting her body and sitting up. Stars rush her vision and she clutches her head, bent over at the waist. She takes a deep, steadying breath.

 

Where is she? 

 

Steph doesn’t remember this room. She thinks back, and the last thing she remembers--she remembers Scarab hunting Tim...but nothing else. She knows, somehow, that that had been a while ago. What happened?

 

She looks down at her legs, at her arms. She has on linen shorts and a cotton shirt. No bra. Her arms are bandaged at the wrists, and her legs are dotted with bruises and she has a splint on her ankle. She feels more bandaging under her shirt, and across her forehead. Her hair is in a loose braid over one shoulder. 

 

Steph stands up. It hurts--it hurts a lot--but she manages. She walks over to the window. This isn’t Wayne Manor, at least not a room she’s been in. From looking out the window, she can see that she’s not in Gotham, either. The sun is shining brightly and a wide, grassy plain stretches out in front of her. Mountains rise in the distance and she’s on the first floor of whatever building she’s in. The sunlight hurts her eyes. 

 

She turns away and combs the room for trackers. Just because it doesn’t  _ seem  _ like she’s in danger doesn’t mean she isn’t. Her search yields nothing and she goes to the door, bracing herself for a fight. Who knows what lies beyond these doors?

 

She pulls the door open and starts, because Leslie Thompkins was on the other side of the door, holding a new cup of water. Leslie jumps back, startled. 

 

“Leslie?” Steph says, and her voice is rusty and creaky from disuse. 

 

How long has it been?

 

“Oh, Steph!” Leslie says, and she throws her arms around her, squeezing gently. “I was beginning to get worried!”

 

“What happened?” Steph asks as Leslie pulls away. “I don’t remember….how long was I out?”

 

“What don’t you remember?” Leslie asks carefully, her face composing itself. 

 

“The last thing I remember...I was in Gotham, and I was helping Batman stop Scarab from hurting Tim, and I think we managed it? I remember losing a fight...but I don’t remember anything else,” Steph says. “I remember the fight and that’s it. Maybe Scarab knocked me out?”

 

That doesn’t explain why she was so bruised up. It doesn’t explain why she feels like she’s missing something, forgetting something important. 

 

“Scarab didn’t knock you out,” Leslie says, clearly choosing her words with care. “Some time has passed since that...incident.”

 

“Then what happened to me?” Steph asks. “How did I get so hurt, and why don’t I remember anything? How much is ‘some time’?”

 

“It’s been about five months,” Leslie says, and the fear--that Steph’d missed  _ years-- _ eases. “You were hurt by Black Mask. I expect you’ve repressed the memories due to the...trauma.”

 

“Trauma?” Steph repeats, and Leslie nods. “What happened?”

 

Leslie says nothing. 

 

Steph turns around and sighs, her gaze falling on the window again. 

 

“Where are we?” she asks. 

 

“Kenya,” Leslie says. 

 

“ _ Keyna,”  _ Steph repeats, turning back to face her. “Like, Africa-Kenya.”

 

“Yes,” Leslie says. 

 

Steph doesn’t even think she has a passport. Why are they in Kenya? What are they doing? Why did Leslie take her to Africa?

 

“Are we...are we alone? Are the others here, too?” Steph asks. She doesn’t have to expand on who ‘the others’ are. Leslie shakes her head. 

 

“It’s just us,” she says, and she hesitates before continuing. “The others don’t know where we are.”

 

Steph finds that incredibly hard to believe. Bruce is the most paranoid motherfucker she knows, and Alfred and Leslie are friends. And why wouldn’t Cass want to know where she is? Unless she and Leslie are in deep cover, or something, but Steph feels like they would be the least likely of their little gang--including Tim, who left--to be chosen for a deep cover mission. 

 

“Why?” she asks. 

 

“I didn't tell them,” Leslie says. “You have to understand, you were very hurt, and you’ve missed a lot.”

 

“I guess,” Steph says. “Are you gonna...tell me what happened?”

 

Leslie’s lips thin and Steph sighs. She doesn’t know what she expected. Leslie makes her sit down on the bed again and checks her heartbeat and blood pressure and temperature. 

 

“How long was I out?” Steph asks, feeling like that could be a reasonable question. 

 

“A week,” Leslie says, then she meets Steph’s eyes. “For a while there, I didn’t think you’d make it.”

 

“Oh,” Steph says, and she looks down at her lap, at the bruises on her legs. “Alright.”

 

Leslie leaves her alone, after that, says that dinner’s in an hour. Steph had already assessed that the room was safe, that she wasn’t in any danger, but now she’s not so sure. Is this a prison? Is being taken to Africa without consent kidnapping? Steph can hear her mother’s voice in her head. 

 

_ “They say that it’s the people you already know, you know,”  _ she whispers in Steph’s head. At the time, Steph had thought she’d meant her dad. But Leslie?

 

Steph chokes on a sob, thinking of her mother. Leslie’d said that nobody knows where they are. But what about Crystal? Where does she think Steph is, if anyplace? She pictures her mom putting MISSING signs up around Gotham, pictures her mom crying at night, not knowing where her daughter is. Steph’s stomach rolls and she really, really hopes Leslie had meant that no  _ bats  _ know where they are, or that even though nobody knows  _ where,  _ they know that Steph is safe. 

 

\---

 

Steph gets up and goes to dinner, following the directions Leslie gave her to get to the kitchen. She sits delicately, and watches Leslie bustle around the kitchen. 

 

“Do you need any help?” she asks. 

 

“Of course not,” Leslie says. “I’ll be right over.”

 

“Okay,” Steph says, and her stomach rumbles, loud and Steph hopes Leslie didn’t hear. If she did, she doesn’t say anything as she brings the soups over. She sets one bowl in front of Steph and another across from her, sitting down. 

 

The soup is probably good, but Steph finds it tasteless. Swallowing hurts. She hadn’t noticed, before, when she was drinking the water, but it burns. 

 

Steph knows she needs food, though, so she stomachs half before she puts her spoon down. 

 

“Why are we in Africa?” she asks. Leslie looks up from her own food and puts her own spoon down, balancing it against the edge of the soup bowl. She steeples her fingers and puts them under her chin. 

 

“I am here,” she says, “to help give poor villages medical care, and to help you recover. Now that you’re awake, we are going to try and move from village to village, providing aid.”

 

“How long are we doing this aid?” Steph asks. Somehow, she doesn’t think she gave Leslie permission to take her on this trip. She doesn’t say that. Leslie’s lips thin. 

 

“However long it takes,” she says. That’s not an answer. Steph doesn’t know what’s going on here, but obviously Leslie’s hiding something from her. Nothing about anything that’s happening makes sense. 

 

“Okay,” she says instead of vocalizing, controlling her face to stay carefully neutral. Steph didn’t go through months of hard training to just lay out all her cards now. Bruce taught her to be suspicious and to be a detective and that’s exactly what she’s going to do. 

 

\---

 

She bides her time, though. Steph’s not stupid and she knows that her body is all broken and she can’t be running around trying to investigate with broken ribs and a gunshot wound. She’s not in Gotham and she can afford a little breather. Besides, she doesn’t want Leslie to think she’s ungrateful--Steph’s pretty sure Leslie saved her life. 

 

She and Leslie are in a rented house on the hospital’s property and have been for the last few weeks. Leslie wants to stay there for another few days so Steph can get a little better before they take a medical van to the a village and stay there for a few weeks. They have internet in the hospital and Steph knows she needs to make her move before she and Leslie leave. 

 

(She wonders if she’ll find an excuse to go home; medicine’s never really been her forte.)

 

\---

 

Since their house is only one floor, sneaking out is easy. There aren’t any alarms or anything, and Steph has Leslie’s sleep schedule figured out. She probably shouldn’t be doing this, Steph thinks as she climbs over the windowsill and lowers herself onto the ground, ignoring her shoulder screaming in protest, but she remembers Batman and how he always went out, night after night, even when he’d been injured. A little bit of broken ribs and concussion isn’t going to stop Steph. 

 

When she’s firmly on the ground on the other side of the house, she brings the window down almost all the way, leaving space for her fingers to pull the window back up later. Then it’s a matter of walking to the hospital. 

 

There’s an ambulance pulled up to the front doors; people are rushing in and out of the hospital to help. It’s easy to slip inside, and Steph follows the signs to the bathroom, knowing that people can get anywhere if they’re headed for the bathroom. 

 

Steph is fluent in Spanish, and she’s good at conversational French and passable in Mandarin. Steph had just started taking the Hindi course on Duolingo when she started at Robin, and after training sessions and patrols Bruce gave her Kryptonian lessons, just for fun. Leslie had mentioned something about Steph learning Swahili, but that had been four days ago and all Steph’s learned so far was how to say “hello” and “thank you”. Some signs in the hospital are bilingual, English and Swahili, and some are just Swahili. Steph hopes that whatever points to the place she’ll find some scrubs in is bilingual. 

 

She can’t believe that she can speak four and a half languages, and none of them are actually  _ useful  _ when she finally leaves the country.  _ Suck it, Alfred,  _ she thinks, because he thought she should learn Latin instead of Kryptonian--”If you insist on learning a dead language, Miss, it might as well be a  _ useful  _ one”--but Latin wouldn’t help with Swahili. 

 

Then Steph feels mean for thinking that, and she sends a mental apology to Alfred. 

 

There’s a closet next to the staircase at the end of the hallway and Steph opens it without needing a key, which she thinks is a little lax, security-wise, but she’s not gonna complain. In the closet are scrubs and coats, and she puts on the scrubs over her long sleeved shirt and shorts, and then the coat on overtop of that. She pins the ID badge she’d swiped from Leslie on the collar of the coat and puts on a pair of glasses from the coat pocket on. The prescription makes her head throb a little, but she ignores it and leaves the closet, heading into the stairway. She hopes that the glasses and her blonde hair will make her look enough like Leslie at first glance that nobody will look twice. Besides, how many white people are in this hospital, anyway?

 

Steph uses the ID card to get into the first dark doctor’s office she sees, and she parks her butt at the computer, taking off the glasses and leaving the lights off. Steph inserts the ID into the slot next to the keyboard and thanks the deity known as Babs for giving her some basic hacking skills. Before long, Steph’s in. 

 

She’s hacked into hospital records before, actually, and she pulls up the patient records easily enough. Typing in her own name yields no results, however. 

 

But Steph is nothing if not determined, and she sticks out her tongue in concentration. Okay, so she wasn’t hospitalized  _ here.  _ But Leslie has only worked here for a few weeks, right?

 

Hacking into Leslie’s clinic back home is easier than Steph feels like it should be, seeing as she’s Batman’s doctor. Steph reasons that maybe Oracle didn’t want to build suspicion around Leslie at all. For some reason, though, Leslie’s clinic is an archive site, like it’s been shut down. Steph frowns but she decides maybe Leslie shut the website down when she took this “vacation”. 

 

She types in her own name in the patient records, and this time something  _ does  _ come up. 

 

She clicks on the most recent entry, and reads her birthday and eye color and height and weight, then she scrolls down. She closes her eyes for a minute before she reads the description of her injuries. After each one, she does a mental checklist on her own body. Ribs? Check. Head trauma? Check. Bullet through the shoulder? Check. Drills?  _ What the hell.  _

 

The weird thing, though, is at the very end, when it says that Steph  _ didn’t survive her injuries.  _ Steph reads the words, over and over, and a dull panic starts to flutter in her chest. 

 

Panicked, but also weirdly detached, Steph opens up Gotham’s death certificates, and finds her own. She finds a copy of her eulogy at GothamFuneral.com and according to that same site, she’s buried next to her mom’s parents. 

 

Except she’s not buried, she’s right here. Steph looks down at her hands, her left wrist still wrapped in a splint. She looks at her legs, blue scrubs covering the bruises on her thighs. She touches her hair, which is a little dry but it feels real. 

 

Is she a ghost?

 

If she’s a ghost, why does everything hurt?

 

Steph’s heard of people coming back from the dead before. Superman, Green Arrow. But it doesn’t just  _ happen,  _ not to people like Steph. Not to kids of second-rate Riddler impersonators. 

 

The panic is gone and there’s a hollow, empty space in Steph’s chest instead. No wonder nobody knows where she and Leslie are. They all think she’s dead. 

 

That answered the question about her mom, Steph guesses, and she buries her face in her hands, sobs a dry, tearless sob. 

 

_ For a while there, I didn’t think you’d make it,  _ Leslie had said. Well. 

 

Steph is sixteen years old. She’s dead. She’s in Kenya. Leslie kidnapped her. Or grave-robbed her, Steph isn’t sure. What else does Steph know? Her favorite color is purple. She hates her dad and loves her mom. Batman is her hero. She was Spoiler. She is Robin. Steph stands up. 

 

No more crying, she tells herself. Not ‘till she gets out of this hospital. 

 

She logs off of the computer and erases everything she did. She re-pins the ID to her coat, and she pushes open the door of the still-dark office. The hall is empty, and she closes the door behind her, gentle. 

 

She turns towards the stairs, and the door opens. She freezes. 

 

From inside the stairway, two boys come out. The first is tall, taller than her, and his face is young but his eyes are old, which looks almost startling on his face. If Steph had to guess, she’d say he’s like, eighteen or nineteen. Maybe older, or maybe younger. His face is weird and it’s hard to tell. He’s built like a brick shithouse, though. Like  _ Bruce  _ or something. 

 

The other boy is small and young, like seven or eight years old, if Steph had to guess. He looks pissed.

 

Both boys have dark hair, but neither are African. They stare at her. 

 

She stares back. 

 

She wonders what they see. She’s short and has blonde curls and she forgot the stupid glasses back inside the office and she probably looks like a kid playing dress up. 

 

“Well, shit,” the older boy says. “You don’t look like a doctor.”

 

“You don’t look like a patient,” Steph fires back, glad to hear English. 

 

“Maybe I’m not a patient,” the boy says, and he steps towards her. She steps back and assesses. She’s sure she could take him on a good day, because she’s scrappy and good at fighting people bigger than she is. But she’s hurt, and also dead. And he doesn’t look very hurt. 

 

“Then what are you doing in a hospital?” she asks, hoping to sound unafraid. 

 

“Trying to find a computer,” the boy says. 

 

“Don’t  _ tell  _ her that,” the younger boy says. His voice is squeaky and bossy. 

 

“Shush,” the older boy says. “She won’t tell, right?”

 

Steph imagines a cat staring down a mouse. She hates that she’s the mouse. She drops into a fighting crouch, determined to just get this over with. 

 

“I won’t if you don’t,” she says, and the older boy laughs, and something twinges in Steph’s mind. There’s something familiar about him, somehow, and Steph thinks he might have a Gotham accent. 

 

She furrows her eyebrows and sets her mouth. 

 

“Are you gonna fight me, Doctor Lady?” the older boy asks. “You can’t take two of us, if you could even take one.”

 

“I’m not fighting the kid,” Steph says, looking at the other kid in confusion. Although he’s small, he certainly looks ready for a fight. 

 

“Don’t be too sure,” the boy in question hisses. Steph doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like any of this. 

 

“Why do you need the computer?” she asks. 

 

“None of your business,” the little boy says. 

 

“Will we have to fight you to get to it?” the older boy asks. Steph looks at the office door. She could just let them through, she guesses. But she’s dead, and she’s invincible. Her eyes narrow, and she nods. 

 

The little kid leaps for her first, and she sidesteps, darting for the older boy, and ignoring her ribs, screaming in pain. 

 

He lunges for her head and she ducks, reaching out to punch him. It lands and she turns, sweeping out her leg at the younger boy, who was going to attack her back. The older boy punches her in the face, and the pain that shoots through her cheek feels grounding and real. 

 

She kicks at his ribs and it connects. She uses her other leg--the bad one, oops--to flip away from him. 

 

Steph’s whole body hates her, but she keeps fighting. She evades the younger kid, which turns out to be a bad move when the two realize they should work together and Steph finds herself pinned to the wall by the older guy, who’s leaning over her. The younger kid stands behind him, arms crossed. Steph wheezes. She thinks she’s maybe torn the stitches in her shoulder. 

 

“You aren’t bad,” the older boy says. “Did better than I thought you would.” Steph pulls her knee up, aiming at the general direction of his crotch. The little kid meets her leg halfway up with his own and swipes it to the side, pressing it into her rib and slamming her back against the wall and robbing her of breath. 

 

“Jeez,” she says, when she can formulate words again. She makes eye contact with the older boy. “Watch out for the kid, he’s kinda strong.”

 

The boy makes a growly noise and Steph laughs, a wheezy thing that hurts her ribs a lot. 

 

“How old are you?” the older boy asks, and he sounds kinda impressed, and amused. 

 

“Sixteen,” Steph says, her voice still a little wheezy. “And my ribs are broken, in case that changes your mind about how you’d go about hitting me in the near future.”

 

The older boy’s eyebrows go up. 

 

“Your ribs are broken? I’m even more impressed with your fighting,” he says. Steph shrugs. 

 

“You know,” she says. “All in a day’s work.”

 

The older boy smiles, a little. 

 

“So what’s an American girl doing in Kenya?” he asks. 

 

“I could ask the same thing,” Steph says, narrowing her eyes. “Funny accent you’ve got. What is that, Jersey? Gotham?” 

 

“I could ask the same of you,” the boy returns. Steph notes that the little boy has vanished and the office door across from her is open. 

 

“Doesn’t seem like a Gothamite like yourself would have reason to be in Africa, and with a little kid,” Steph says.

 

“We’re just passing through,” he says. “And you?”

 

“Let’s call it a vacation,” Steph says. She looks him up and down. “How old are you? Eighteen?”

 

“Nineteen,” he corrects. 

 

“Pretty built for a nineteen year old,” Steph says.

 

“I do crossfit.”

 

“I’m sure you do.” 

 

“Todd,” the little boy says, reappearing, and flicking an ID card to the floor. “We don’t have time to waste. I got the tickets.”

 

“Great,” the older boy says, and he drops Steph back to the ground. She crosses her arms and leans back against the wall, trying to be cool. She glares at him. “See you in Gotham, maybe.”

 

“Sure,” Steph says, and then the boys are gone, the stairwell door swinging shut behind them. 

 

Steph scrambles for the office the younger kid had vacated, scooping up the ID he’d stolen from her and putting it back in the computer, powering it up. The kid hadn’t deleted the history. Sloppy. 

 

He’d bought two plane tickets from Egypt to New York, with a stop in Spain on the way. If they’re headed to New York, then they’re headed to Gotham. And both boys seemed familiar, although in different ways. 

 

The younger boy had called the first “Todd”. There’s only one person Steph knows with that name, and she hopes she’s wrong. 

 

Buying a ticket on the same plane with the same credit card number is a matter of pressing a few buttons. Steph makes herself a new email address and sends the ticket to herself. Leslie had gotten her cheap smartphone and it would have to be good enough, at least to access her email. 

 

On another tab, the little kid had found cargo train schedules, and one from a station fifty miles away leaves at noon tomorrow, and heads up for Egypt. She emails the schedule, and a map to the station to herself as well. 

 

She logs out of the computer, grabs the glasses she’d left by the keyboard, and leaves. 

 

\----

 

Steph had had the foresight to pack her meager possessions into the backpack Leslie provided for her, and she sneaks back inside the house long enough to grab them. She’d ditched the scrubs at the hospital, and she puts Leslie’s ID on the kitchen table, and scribbles out a note. 

 

_ Thanks for everything. _

 

_ \--S _

 

Leslie has a buggy, and Steph steals the keys and leaves. It’s around four in the morning, and she only has to drive fifty miles before noon. She doesn’t  _ technically  _ have a license, but a permit and Bruce taught her to drive all sorts of vehicles. 

 

(Not the Batmobile, though, which sucks.)

 

She puts her bag on the shotgun seat and drives away, heading for the station. It only takes her a little bit to get used to driving. The roads are a little bumpy but mostly empty, besides one time when another ambulance roars past her, heading in the opposite direction. Steph wonders what the boys did, if they have a car or something. Pretty quick, she gets her answer in the form of the two of them trodding along the road ahead of her. She’s glad there’s no real windows on this buggy for the first time.

 

“What, are you guys planning on  _ walking  _ fifty miles to the station?” she calls, slowing as she drives past them. “Gee, I heard boys were stupid, but I didn’t think it was  _ that  _ bad.”

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” the older boy asks. It’s too dark to see if he’s pissed or not. 

 

“Uhhh, driving?” Steph says, slowing the car to a crawl. The boys easily keep up. 

 

“How do you know about the station?” the younger boy asks. 

 

“Well, I was  _ really  _ concerned about the wellbeing of a six year old walking fifty miles in one night,” Steph says. “So I, you know, followed you. A little bit.”

 

“I am  _ eight!”  _ the little boy says. His voice squeaks in outrage. 

 

“Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe,” Steph says. “Are you coming or not?”

 

The older boy picks up the younger one like he’s a sack of those potatoes, and tosses him onto the back of the car. The older boy swings up after, and Steph puts her foot on the gas and floors it. 

 

Her buggy is, sadly, not very fast, and Steph says, yelling over her shoulder as both boys camped out in the back, “This generous ride is offered for the very low price of your names.”

 

“I’m Jason; he’s Damian,” the older boy says, and Steph purses her lips and catalogues that information. 

 

Well, this is either proof she’s been stashed in purgatory upon her death--for this can’t be heaven and she doesn’t really think she deserves hell--

 

(the surgical scars along her stomach ache)

 

\--or it’s proof that people can come back to life. Steph isn’t sure which one she’d rather it be. 

 

“My name’s Steph,” she says, after perhaps too long of a time. 

 

“Nice to meet you,” Jason says in return. The rest of the ride passes in silence. 

 

Obviously, they make it to the station way to early. Steph kinda wants to sleep until noon, rest her ribs and all of her various injuries, but she doesn’t know if she should trust Jason. 

 

She thinks of the glass box, in the cave. She thinks of the familiar way Damian moves, and she sighs. 

 

“Hey, Jason,” she says, and she turns around. Damian is asleep, sitting ramrod straight, his hands folded neatly in his lap. Steph raises her eyebrow but doesn’t comment. “Can I trust you to let me sleep for a little bit?”

 

“Don’t know why you’d want to, but sure,” Jason says, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. 

 

“If you wake me in a little bit, you can sleep, too,” Steph says. Jason shrugs one shoulder, the vision of careless, and Steph turns back around. She grabs her backpack from the seat next to her and holds it to her chest. There’s nothing of value in there, but still. She leans her head back and closes her eyes, hoping she’s not being stupid. 

 

She’s dead. She’s dead and so is the guy behind her. Jesus Christ. When did her life go this way?

 

She falls asleep, uneasy and unsteady, and tells her body to wake itself in a few hours. 

 

\----

 

When Steph wakes up, the sun is shining and when she squints at it, she thinks it’s probably around ten. She turns around, and Jason’s head is on the back of the seat, his legs stretched out long, sprawling over most of the backseat. He’s asleep, his mouth a little open. Damian’s arms are crossed, and he’s staring at Steph, his face pinchy. 

 

“Hey, kid,” Steph says, keeping her voice quiet. “Do you wanna scrounge up some food with me?”

 

He hesitates, and then nods, and they leave the car together. They’re parked a little away from the loading dock, which has a few people milling about. The train is there and being loaded. 

 

They find a vending machine, and Steph uses what cash she has to load up on snacks and candy. 

 

“This barely constitutes as food,” Damian scoffs, but he unwraps a Twix bar anyway. 

 

“It’s the option, kid,” Steph says. She still hasn’t figured out who she thinks his mom is, but she knows for certain he’s been raised  _ really  _ weirdly. 

 

“I am not a child,” Damian says. “Refrain from referring to me as such.”

 

“Then what are you?” Steph asks. 

 

“I am a master fighter, trained to take over my father’s legacy in all the ways possible.”

 

“Hm. Okay,” Steph says. She thinks of Cass. “I’m…not sure that’s how that works.”

 

“It is,” Damian says, confidently, and Steph decides maybe she’s wrong about who she thought Damian’s dad was. She and Damian take their loot back to the buggy and put it in their bags. All Damian and Jason have are backpacks, too, which Steph supposes is fitting. 

 

“What time do you think it is?” she asks, and Damian squints up at the sun. 

 

“Ten forty,” he says, and Steph shrugs. 

 

“Wake up Jason, would you?” she says, and Damian pokes Jason’s cheek. 

 

“Wake up,” he says, and Jason jolts awake. 

 

Steph opens a water bottle and digs out some painkillers from her backpack, taking a swig of her water to swallow them down. 

  
  


“We should get on the train now,” Steph says, wiping her mouth and stashing the bottle on the side pocket of the backpack. She reshoulders the backpack and moves around to the back of the buggy to face the boys. 

 

“So that’s it? You’re coming with us?” Jason asks, his eyebrow near his hairline. 

 

“Hey,” Steph shrugs. “I need to get to Gotham. You guys are going to Gotham.”

 

“We haven’t even had a real conversation. All we’ve done is fight,” Jason says. “You don’t know either of us.”

 

“Well,” Steph says. “You don’t know  _ me _ , either.”

 

\---

 

Steph suspects Jason is going to try and ditch her when they get to Egypt, so all Steph has to do is convince them to keep her before then. Or just meet them on the plane, she guesses. 

 

They sit in the cargo train, across from each other. Jason and Damian on one side, leaning against a wall of cardboard boxes, and Steph on the other side, mirroring them. 

 

She looks down her shirt at the bandage over her stitches, and there’s a red stain across it. 

 

“Jesus,” she says, and then she leans her head back against the boxes. “Do either of you have sewing materials? Like, for sewing a human person back up?”

 

“Are you hurt?” Jason asks. 

 

“My, uh, stitches ripped,” Steph says, putting her hand over the injury and wincing. “Probably should’ve repaired them instead of taking that nap.”

 

“Take your shirt off,” Jason instructs, and Steph might complain except she knows he has the same amount of med training she does. She attempts to take it off one-handed, then sighs. 

 

“That’s not gonna happen.”

 

“Help her,” Jason says, and Damian scoffs. 

 

“Beneath me,” he says. 

 

“Either get the first aid stuff, or take her damn shirt off,” Jason snaps, and Damian exhales loudly, then he crawls over to Steph. 

 

“Can I cut it?” he asks her. She nods and he takes a knife from his boot and slices the shirt off. Jason comes over, walking on his knees, and says, “This is gonna hurt.”

 

“I can take it,” Steph says, and Jason nods regretfully before he rips the bandage off. Steph bites her tongue. 

 

“Yikes,” Jason says, looking at her injury. “What happened?”

 

“Bullet,” Steph says. “Went all the way through my shoulder. The back is fine, though. I think.”

 

Jason’s hands are gentle and he moves her forward to look at the back. 

 

“Yeah, no blood,” he says. “Lemme, uh, redo those stitches.”

 

“Thanks,” Steph says. 

 

“So how’d you get shot?” Jason asks, lifting the needle he’d prepared while Damian took Steph’s shirt off. 

 

“I was, uh, fighting,” Steph says. “You know how Gotham is.”

 

“Yeah,” Jason says. “You a street kid?”

 

“You could say that,” Steph says, then she can’t talk anymore because Jason begins to sew her up. She closes her eyes and leans her head against the box she’s leaning against, grabbing onto the first thing she can and squeezing. Damian shakes her hand off in disgust. 

 

“Don’t touch me,” he says, and then he moves away and Steph clings to her own leg instead. Jason moves fast and uses bandages from Steph’s bag when he’s done, then he replaces the ones on her back. Steph wishes she hadn’t taken that earlier painkiller so she could take it now.

 

Jason moves away from her when he’s done with the stitches and helping her put her new shirt on. 

 

“Thanks,” she says.

 

“No problem,” he says. “Were you really gonna stitch yourself up?”

 

“If I had to,” Steph says, shrugging her good shoulder. “So why are you two traveling together? You don’t look related, no offense.”

 

“He is escorting me to Gotham, despite me needing no such escortment,” Damian says. 

 

“No,” Jason says. “I owed his mom a favor, so I’m helping take care of him until we get back.”

 

“Is his dad in Gotham?” Steph asks. They exchange a look, as if they know something she doesn’t. Except Steph’s pretty sure she’s in on the joke, so it doesn’t work that well. 

 

“I don’t want to talk about his dad,” Jason says, and there’s something there, under his voice, something hard. 

 

“Alright,” she says, holding up her hands in surrender. When Jason doesn’t try and say anything else, Steph doesn’t press the matter and instead leans back against the cardboard, closing her eyes to try and rest. 

 

Resting sucks. 

 

Resting sucks because resting means thinking, and thinking means remembering the hospital, and her death record. Because Steph’s dead. Which is weird, because her shoulder nearly bled out and her ribs definitely still hurt. Steph groans and opens her eyes again, figuring she might as well just get it all over with. 

 

“Hey, Jason?” she asks. 

 

“Yeah?” he says. 

 

“You were dead, right? So how’d you...come back?”

 

Jason’s eyes look like saucers and Damian chokes on nothing. 

 

“Excuse me?” Jason says, his voice vaguely strangled. 

 

“How could you possibly know?” Damian asks. “The Lazarus pits never leave any sign of damage!”

 

“Oh, Lazarus pits?” Steph asks. “Your mom is Talia, then.”

 

“Excuse me?” Jason asks. “What is going on? Care to explain?”

 

“Oh, right,” Steph says. “Damian called you ‘Todd’, but your name is Jason, which would probably make you Jason Todd. And everyone in Gotham knows he’s dead. So how are you alive?”

 

“Okay, sure, but the Lazarus pit thing?” 

 

“Is that how you were brought back? I thought those just repaired and extended life, not actually redid it.”

 

“How do you know about Lazarus pits?” Jason asks, nearly yelling and Steph blinks. 

 

“Sorry. My dad is a low-level rogue and I became a vigilante to stop him. Then when he got jailed I, uh, didn’t stop.” She thinks about telling them that she’s Robin, but then she remembers the hardness in Jason’s voice and Damian’s “legacy” thing, and she doesn’t say that. 

 

“ _ You’re  _ a Bat,” Jason says, his voice flat. 

 

“Yes,” Steph says, nodding. “That’s how I got hurt.”

 

“Hm,” Jason says, leaning back and looking at Damian, who shrugs and leans forward. Steph sees the  _ interrogation mode  _ turn on in his eyes. 

 

“You know my father?” he asks. Steph nods. “And you’ve heard of my mother?” Steph nods again. 

 

“Dick told me about her,” she says. 

 

“Dick?” Damian repeats, looking at Jason. 

 

“Nightwing,” Jason says. “Unless that’s changed?”

 

“No,” Steph says. “He’s still Nightwing.”

 

“And there’s more Bats? When I was there it was just me, Dick, Babs, Alfred, and uh. You know.”

 

“Yeah, well, now there’s Tim and Cass too,” Steph says. “And me, I guess.”

 

“So you weren’t adopted?”

 

“No,” Steph says. “My mom’s still alive and decent.”

 

“That’s nice,” Jason says, sounding kind of like he doesn’t believe that. “Tim and Cass?”

 

“Cass is Batgirl,” Steph says. “She’s pretty badass.” Jason nods, as if that information is helpful. “And Tim was Robin. I mean--”

 

“Replacement,” Jason growls, and Steph blinks. She supposes that’s true, and now she applauds herself for not mentioning her own role in the Robin legacy, because otherwise she suspects Jason would’ve thrown her off the train. 

 

“I guess,” she says, and the murdery look in Jason’s eyes doesn’t go away. 

 

“You fucking know about me, right?” Jason says. “You know how I died, you know what happened.”

 

“Yes,” Steph says, hesitant. 

 

“Why the  _ hell  _ would he let more kids be Robin?” Jason growls. “He can’t just….we aren’t  _ soldiers  _ to  _ replace.  _ He was supposed to be my  _ dad.”  _

 

“He  _ is  _ my dad, so have care how you speak,” Damian says, sounding like he’s trying to be threatening, but he’s too small to make any real effort. Sorry, but eight year olds just  _ aren’t  _ scary. 

 

Steph closes her mouth and does not mention that before all this death nonsense, she and Bruce were getting closer. She doesn’t mention that the only thing she’s wanted since her dad got put away is membership in that stupid family. 

 

“He’s a real asshole sometimes,” is what she says instead. Damian glares at her. “Look, you’ve never met him, right? It’s true.”

 

“It is,” Jason says, and then he crosses his arms. “Whatever.”

 

They’re all quiet for a minute and then Steph says, “So, Talia’s kid, huh?”

 

“Yes,” Damian says. 

 

“Jesus. B is gonna have a heart attack,” she says, shaking her head. “I guess that explains why you can fight, and also why you have a knife, and a sword.” Damian’s sword is next to him and he touches it when she mentions it. 

 

“I am also proficient in throwing batarangs,” he says. “Mother had some made.”

 

“Awesome. So what’s your plan, once you get to Gotham?”

 

“I will find my father and make myself known to him, and then he will teach me in his ways.”

 

“So you wanna be Robin?” Steph asks, raising an eyebrow. Would she give Robin to this kid? Is Robin even hers to give away?

 

“Robin is for imbeciles,” Damian says. “But if Father deems it necessary, then yes, I will become Robin.”

 

“Oooookay,” Steph says, stretching out the word. “You know your brother over there was Robin, right?”

 

“Todd is  _ not  _ my brother,” Damian hisses, and Jason says, “Yeah, I’m not so sure about all that.”

 

“There are some legal documents that say otherwise,” Steph says. 

 

“Yeah, like my death certificate?” Jason says, laughing dryly. “I don’t think so, Steph.”

 

“What is your surname?” Damian asks suddenly, and Steph remembers that he calls Jason by his last name. 

 

“Don’t have one,” she says, smiling without showing teeth, and thinking she’d rather die (again) than be referred to by “Brown”. “I’m like Beyonce.”

 

“I am  _ not  _ calling you ‘Steph’,” Damian says, disdain dripping from her name. 

 

“Okay, well, I could refuse to use  _ your  _ name, but I’m not gonna,” Steph says. “Steph’s my  _ name.  _ But if you’re gonna be weird, you can call me Stephanie.”

 

“Fine,” Damian huffs, and then he crosses his arms and turns away from her. 

 

“He’s weird,” Jason says, as if that explains anything. 

 

“Obviously,” Steph says. “How much longer until we reach Egypt?”

 

“Probably not much longer,” Jason says. “It’s only a six hour train ride.”

 

“Right, ‘only’,” Steph says. “It’s not like growing up in the Narrows led me for much opportunities for road tripping.”

 

“I know,” Jason says. “First time I left the country, I died.”

 

Hey, me too, Steph wants to say, but she doesn’t know if she wants to unveil that particular tidbit to Jason. He’d wanna know why, and since  _ she  _ doesn’t know why, she doesn’t really want to like, deal with all of that. 

 

Instead, she crosses her ankles and her arms and says, “How  _ did  _ you come back, anyway? You never said.”

 

“I wish I fucking knew,” Jason says. “Talia found me already alive, and Lazarus-pitted me to help me out. The space between the Joker and Talia is all a blank.”

 

“Sure,” Steph says, and she wishes she even had a Joker to remember. At least then she’d know, and it’s not like her hospital records said “CAUSE OF DEATH: SHOT AND PUSHED OFF A BUILDING BY SCARECROW” or whatever. 

 

Then again, remembering being shot and then sent off a building might not be super fun. That’s probably why she doesn’t remember. 

 

“What’s your plan, when you get back to Gotham?” Jason asks her. “Are you gonna tell Bruce I’m alive?”

 

Steph shrugs, and realizes she hasn’t thought past getting there. 

 

“I don’t know,” she says. “But if you don’t want me to tell him, I won’t.”

 

“I have my own plan for that,” Jason says. 

 

“What is it?” Steph asks. 

 

“Let’s just say that a lot of people are gonna get what they deserve,” Jason says, smiling but  _ not  _ in a nice way, and for the first time, Steph’s afraid of him. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a lot shorter than the other one! sorry! i wanted to keep writing but i really needed to end it right where i did, you know?
> 
> this chapter has a mention of my HC that steph is latina! speaking of that, i used google translate for the scene in spain so my spanish might be a little off. :0

Turns out, the official language of Egypt is Arabic, which Damian is fluent in. It is also Damian’s first language. Also, Jason is passable in conversational Arabic. Steph feels pretty useless, while they get a taxi from the station to the airport, and then again when they check into the airport. She reminds herself that they’ll be in Spain in a few hours, and then she can show them. 

 

“We didn’t have to knock out those guys at the station,” Steph says, when they’re seated at their gate and waiting for boarding to begin. None of them had to check a bag and what is it about traveling that makes people so tired? Steph had slept the last leg of their train ride and earlier in the buggy and she’s already exhausted again. 

 

“Easier,” Jason says, shrugging. 

 

“It is not,” Steph says. “Sneaking has equal merit to violence.”

 

“Like you’ve never been violent,” Jason says, and Steph recalls her favorite memory and smiles. 

 

“See, you even revel in it,” Jason says. 

 

“Sure,” Steph says. 

 

“What were you reveling in?” Damian asks, returning from the bookstore. It probably wasn’t wise to let an eight year old purchase a book by himself but Steph’s sure he’s done worse than hand a store lady some money. 

 

“The time I visited my dad in jail and beat him up while he couldn’t run,” Steph says, smiling again. 

 

“I wish,” Jason says, and Steph wonders if he means his bio dad or Bruce. Damian opens his mouth and Jason elbows him. “What did I say about the ‘respect your father’ tirade?”

 

“That not everybody has the ideal circumstances and privilege I do and sometimes fathers are ‘asshats’,” Damian says, as if reciting something memorized. Steph snorts. “What?”

 

“Nothing,” Steph says. “It’s just funny. Sometimes fathers  _ are  _ asshats.”

 

“I’m always right,” Jason says, crossing his arms. “Say, how’d you manage to get tickets next to ours on the plane?”

 

“Oh,” Steph says, feeling a little embarrassed. “I sort of hacked into Damian’s history on the computer he bought the tickets on and just used the same credit card number. Whoever’s cash that is, sorry, by the way.”

 

“You know a lot of shit, but you clearly need to brush up on your hacking,” Jason informs Damian, who looks pissed. “Also it’s Talia’s money so whatever.”

 

“Good,” Steph says. Jason stands up and stretches. 

 

“I’m gonna go get us some food,” he says. “Any allergies?” 

 

Steph shakes her head and Jason tells them both that if their boarding gets called, to just get on the plane and Jason would find them. Then he saunters away. 

 

“I cannot believe my father never taught you Arabic,” Damian says. “Although perhaps he didn’t want to waste his time with you.”

 

“ _ Perhaps _ I only started officially training with him like two months before I got hurt and went to Africa,” Steph says. “I don’t know about you, but  _ I  _ can’t learn a whole language in two months.” Two months, forty-eight days, whatever. 

 

“Imbecile,” Damian scoffs.

 

“Okay,  _ rude,”  _ Steph says. The TSA attendant by their gate makes an announcement, and Steph turns to look at her, despite not knowing Arabic in the slightest. 

 

When the lady is done, Steph turns to look at Damian, who has opened his new book and is reading smugly. Steph narrows her eyes. 

 

“What’d she say?” she asks. 

 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Damian says, turning a page in his book. Steph considers strangling him. 

 

“God, I cannot  _ wait  _ for Spain,” she sighs, settling for throwing her arm over her face dramatically. 

 

“Why, so you can use your rudimentary fourth grade Spanish classes as a crutch? What is this, racism?” Damian spits, and Steph lowers her arm. 

 

“ _ No,”  _ she says, and then Jason decides to show up. 

 

“Hey, guys,” he says. “Didn’t find any restaurants without a huge-ass line, so I bought some chips and I guess we’ll get real food in Spain.” He throws a bag of chips at Steph and another at Damian, then the TSA lady makes another announcement, and Jason says, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but boarding is starting.”

 

“You are accurate,” Damian says. “Surprisingly.” He stands and marches forward, leaving Steph and Jason to follow. 

 

“He’s like eight,” Steph says. “I’ve never met an eight year old so uppity.”

 

“Yeah, well, Ra’s al Ghul as a grandfather will do that to you,” Jason says darkly. “Talia did the best she could and he’s still a little bitch.”

 

“He’s a kid,” Steph says. “Just a weird one.”

 

“Whatever,” Jason says, and they arrive in the line. They’re flying first class, and Steph looks at the rest of the first class people and themselves. All of them are dirty from the train and the open air buggy before that. Steph longs for the sensual embrace of a warm shower. Two more planes, she tells herself, because thinking of it like that is easier than thinking in terms of hours. The TSA agent by the entry to the tunnel makes an announcement, then repeats it in English.   
  


“First class, now boarding.”

 

Last time Steph was on an international airplane, she was dead or close to it, so she doesn’t remember how  _ big  _ they are, with the whole middle row in addition to the other ones. First class seats are  _ giant  _ and Steph is surprised by this. She’s never even been on a plane with a first class before. She’s only been on three planes, one to Texas to visit her mom’s parents and then one back to Gotham, and the other was the Batplane. 

 

She sits in the asle, with Jason in the middle and Damian on the other side, which is probably good because Damian is considerably more awful to Steph than he is to Jason. Probably because he’s only known her for like twelve hours. 

 

Steph is sure when she’s properly energized and back on familiar soil she’ll be able to figure Damian out and also befriend him. 

 

Instead, though, she tries to work at the TV screen on the seat in front of her and looks at all the options. She picks a kids movie that she’d liked the trailers for but wasn’t going to cough up cash to go see, but then the plane-provided earbuds are shitty so she turns it off after the Universal logo and just goes to sleep. 

 

\----

 

She wakes up a little later and finds the plane tracker on the TV and she has enough time for the movie, so she eats her chips and watches the movie for the rest of the flight. It’s entertaining, but she’s glad she didn’t pay to see it. 

 

After she’s done, she goes to the bathroom. She lifts her shirt and switches the bandage on the front of her shoulder. She can’t reach the back and will have to get someone else to do it for her, although she’s not really sure when. 

 

She goes back to her seat and sits down; fifteen minutes later the plane lands. The flight attendant says “Welcome to Spain” in Arabic, English, and Spanish. Jason wakes Damian up and they get off the plane. Their layover is a few hours long and Damian surveys the room and then demands food. 

 

“Let’s find our new gate, first,” Jason says, and they follow him to the sign. Jason leads them to their gate and Steph and Damian lag behind.

 

“How’s your Spanish, kid?” Steph asks him, and he scoffs. 

 

“I have a grasp of the top ten most used languages in the world,” Damian says. 

 

“That’s nice,” Steph says. She jogs to catch up with Jason and scolds herself for wanting to upstage a kid. 

 

They settle for a Chinese fast food place and Jason orders his food in Spanish before he turns to Steph. 

 

“What do you want?” he asks her. She steps up to the counter. 

 

“ _ Pollo a la naranja con arroz frito, por favor _ ,” Steph says sweetly to the man behind the register, then she steps back and enjoys the look on Damian’s face despite herself. “ _ Tu papá ni siquiera necesitaba enseñarme  _ _ español _ _.” _

 

_ “Vete a la mierda,”  _ Damian spits. 

 

“Language,” Jason admonishes, turning back around. 

 

“You say it!” Damian protests. “So does she!”

 

“Neither of  _ us _ are under a decade old, squirt,” Jason says. Steph smiles smugly at him. “Also, if you two can’t get along then we’re gonna have to leave Steph here.”

 

“Hey!” Steph says. Someone behind the counter hands them their food and they take it across the way to a table. 

  
  


The rest of their time at the airport passes quickly and when they board the plane, Jason lets Steph have the window this time and Damian have the aisle seat. 

  
  
  


The flight is uneventful and when it’s over, Steph is unnecessarily glad to be back on American soil. Her earlier guess about them taking a bus back to Gotham was proven right, and she sits alone on the seat behind Damian and Jason. 

 

She still doesn’t know what she’s going to do when she gets back to Gotham. She’s Robin, and she should rejoin Batman, probably tell him that Jason’s planning something, something maybe-bad. 

 

But how do you come back from being dead? How do you come back from being dead when you don’t even know why you died in the first place, when you don’t remember five months of your life?

 

Steph scrubs at her eyes even though they’re dry. She doesn’t know why she’s alive and she doesn’t know why she died. She’s gotta tell her mom that she’s okay, gotta tell Batman and Cass. She wonders how they’ll react and pictures her mom crying and Cass crying and Batman--he doesn’t cry, so maybe just a pat on the shoulder. Maybe a smile. 

 

Steph drifts asleep, tired from the travel and her body not knowing what time it is. 

 

When she opens her eyes, Superman is in front of her, and he holds out a hand to help her stand. 

 

“Hello, Stephanie,” he says, smiling kindly, and Steph smiles back. 

 

“Hi,” she says. Superman leads her off the bus, where Green Arrow is waiting.

 

“Congrats on being alive,” he says. Green Arrow is holding onto the string of an IT’S A GIRL! balloon. He’s smiling, too. The balloon has a little baby on it, and the baby is also smiling, a big gummy toothless smile. 

 

“We made it, huh?” Jason says, but it’s Robin. Robin is wearing the costume in the display case, blood splattered on the yellow cape. He’s swinging a crowbar around, and when he smiles up at her--he’s so  _ small-- _ he’s missing a tooth. 

 

“I guess we did,” Steph says, unsettled. 

 

“Come on, we need to go to the party,” Superman says. “It’s this way.” He points to Arkham, just beyond the hill. Green Arrow is holding Robin on one hip with one hand, the other still clutched tight to the balloon. Superman holds out his hand, and Steph takes it. Her hand is green and when she looks down, she sees she’s dressed as Robin, too. Their little party walks over the hill and the doors to the asylum open before Superman can knock. 

 

“Welcome home,” Cluemaster says, smiling wide, like the Joker. He’s wearing bright orange and his hair is falling in tangles around his face.

 

“No,” Steph says, backing up. “No, no--you’re dead.”

 

“So are you, little girl,” Cluemaster says. “Now come to Daddy.” He opens his arms like he’s beckoning her for a hug. Steph takes another step back. 

 

“Now, Stephanie,” Superman says, still smiling his perfect smile. “You can’t disobey your dad, now, can you?”

 

“Come on,” Robin says, swinging his crowbar in a circle. “It’s just a stupid hug.” The crowbar hits the balloon while it swings up, and the balloon pops, the sound like a gunshot. 

 

“Come on, little girl,” another voice says, deep and dark and terrible, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Steph’s never heard this voice before, but she feels it in her bones. She wants to throw up. 

 

“Come to Daddy,” Cluemaster says again, gesturing with his hands, still in the doorway to the asylum. “Come on.”

 

“Be careful, sweetheart,” the voice says. “You wouldn’t want to get hurt.”

 

“Listen, Stephanie,” Superman says, his grin stretching wide and looming, and Green Arrow says, “Be a good girl, now.”

 

“Hey asshole,” Robin says, looking bored. He throws the crowbar to her, and when she catches it it turns into a gun. “Wake up!”

 

Steph gasps and leans forward, putting her hand over her beating heart and her other hand on the window. Her pulse is hammering in her ears and she’s sweaty and gross. She feels like she might pass out, and she’s grateful nobody sat next to her. 

 

Apparently her gasp wasn’t loud enough to warrant attention, because neither Jason nor Damian turn around to check on her. Whatever. Fuck them. Steph doesn’t need ‘em.

 

By the time Steph’s back under control, the bus pulls into the Metropolis station. 

 

They have to get off, because no self-respecting bus line goes to Gotham except the ones in Metropolis. Metropolis is stupid like that. 

 

When they’re off the bus, Steph casts her gaze skyward, thinking of the Superman in her dream. She’s never met Superman, and she’s pretty sure he’s not like that. 

 

Jason buys tickets for the next bus to Gotham, and when he comes back she says, “How are you gonna tell people you’re alive? How do you even...start that conversation?”

 

“I told you, I have a plan.”

 

“For  _ Bruce,  _ sure,” Steph says. “But what about like, your best friend, or a cousin or something? How do you tell all the people who were at your funeral but you never really talked to? People who cried over you?”

 

“You don’t,” Jason says darkly, crossing his arms, and Steph thinks that maybe she and him have a different approach to this whole returning-from-the-dead thing. 

 

“Why do you ask?” Damian asks. 

 

“I don’t know,” Steph says. “It just seems insane, that’s all.”

 

“I have a plan,” Jason says again. On the bus to Gotham, none of them sit next to each other because the bus only has two other people on it. For the first time, it sinks in that everything is going to be different now. She was  _ dead.  _ Is there really any going back on that? Can she ever go back to school, see the people she’s known since kindergarten? She wasn’t close to any of them, but she’s sure they were at her funeral, at least a few of them. How is she supposed to finish high school?

 

Steph stares out the window and dimly registers when they cross the bridge from Metropolis to Gotham. The buildings blur and the bus stops. Steph recognizes the building across the road from her as the apartment Barbara lives in.

 

Wait. There’s no bus stop here--Steph turns and the bus driver is standing up, facing them and holding up a gun. 

 

“Put yer hands up,” he says. “And give me your money.”

 

“Which one?” Steph says, unable to stop her mouth from moving. She’s racing to make mental calculations. Can she fight in a bus, with a bullet wound and broken ribs? “Hands up or money? Cause those are two very different things, you know.”

 

“Shut up!” the driver says. Steph puts her hands on the seat in front of her and imagines flipping over it, but Damian gets to the front first, kicking the gun out of the driver’s hand. It flips away and Jason catches it. Steph’s moving now, and she’s right behind Jason when he aims the gun at the driver’s head. 

 

“What the hell are you  _ doing?”  _ Steph cries. 

 

“He was gonna kill us!” Jason says over his shoulder, and Steph begs forgiveness from her poor body, then she jumps on Jason’s back, latching her legs around his waist and reaching for the gun, dragging him backwards and hoping Damian will just incipicate the driver in a non lethal way. Jason shoots the roof of the bus while Steph pulls him backwards. 

 

“Get off of me,” he grunts, using one hand to try and pry off her arm. Steph uses his arm on hers as leverage and looks over his shoulder to see that Damian has knocked the man out. She drops from Jason’s back and grabs her backpack from the floor. The other two bus riders are in the back, looking a little pissed maybe but not really afraid.  _ Gothamites.  _

 

Steph gets to her feet and kicks Jason’s legs from behind. He crumples and she snatches the gun, stepping over him. He grabs one of her ankles and she throws the gun at his head. He lets go in shock and Steph scrambles up to her feet, pocketing the bullets she’d emptied from the gun. She runs to the bus’s doors and slams the button to open it, then turns to Damian. 

 

“Do you wanna go with me?” she asks, and Damian’s eyes are big and he looks between Steph and Jason, who’s on his feet and advancing. He looks pissed. Oops. “Well?” 

 

“I--”

 

Jason’s going to kill Steph, possibly, but she doesn’t think he’ll hurt Damian. 

 

“I’ll come back,” she vows, then she leaves the bus and runs. 

 

\----

 

Steph is not paying attention to where she’s going until she has to slow down. She’s in the center of the city, close to where Steph knows Wayne Tower is. She needs to eat but she doesn’t think she has any cash, and she’s back on home turf but she’s dead. The sun is close to setting and some unsavory characters will be emerging soon; Steph doesn’t think it’d be very smart to be a sixteen year old girl out alone at night in Gotham, especially since she’s hurt. 

 

Steph’s feet start walking before Steph’s decided where she’s going but when she figures it out she gives her brain a pat on the back. In the block next to the GCPD headquarters, there’s an old grocery store on the first floor of an apartment building. The grocery store is long abandoned and was bought by Wayne Enterprises but never renovated or redone, and when Steph arrives at a side door, formerly used for entering the stockroom, she lifts a fake brick from its place and types in Cass’s password. Who knows if her own is still functional, and who knows how often the entry log is checked. 

 

The door unlocks and Steph pushes it open. The entrance to the safehouse is underground among the stocks and Steph finds it easily. She goes down the ladder and isn’t sure if she wants it to be empty down there or not. 

 

It is, and Steph takes off her backpack and heads to the cupboard along the side wall to get some food. The whole safehouse is three rooms, the main one and a little bedroom off the side with a bathroom. The main room has a training mat and costume storage, and the bedroom has two small beds. The bathroom has a shower, which Steph takes as her first priority. When she’s done and feels like an actual human being again, she puts on fresh underwear from the dresser in the bedroom--nobody has cleared out her basket, next to Cass’s and Babs’s. This safehouse is girls-only, and even though Babs made Bruce buy the grocery store Steph doesn’t think the boys know that it exists. 

 

Steph is tired but she guzzles down a monster from the fridge and takes an energy pack and some ibuprofen and hopes she’ll make it. She’d rather get a scope on the Gotham situation before she sleeps, start to try and make a plan. 

 

She doesn’t have a Robin costume in this safehouse; she guesses that she’s never been here since becoming Robin. There’s a Spoiler and Batgirl suit, though, and Steph touches her purple cape but then looks over to Cass’s suit thoughtfully. 

 

She leaves the safehouse in her own suit, gloves, boots, and mask, but Cass’s cape. Cass’s cape is black and therefore will draw less attention, Steph thinks. She’s always been good at being stealthy but she wants to be even more so tonight. 

 

Besides, Spoiler’s pretty recognizable. 

 

Steph fires the grapple and grins under her mask at the familiar whizz, and she lets it pull her up and onto the rooftops, which is where she belongs, she thinks. 

 

Being back on patrol, feeling that rush, breathing that stinky, dirty, beautiful Gotham air--so much more healing than whatever Africa bullshit Leslie had Steph doing. Steph does a flip between rooftops, not caring about her injuries, and she runs and gets her heart pumping, her blood moving. It’s mostly just a workout, all in a big square around her prime target, and when the signal turns on, gleaming dully in the sky above, Steph pumps her fist in the air and heads for it from behind. 

 

She waits at the base of the light, watching Gordon stare up at the sky, hands in his pockets. All she needs is for Batman to show up, then she can follow him--if he notices her, so what?--and see how he’s doing, see if he’s okay--then she’ll go to her mom in the morning, and tell her everything, and then she’ll see about Cass, see who she can get the story from, see if she can find the missing five months. 

 

Her heart is beating wildly in anticipation. Steph knows how long it takes for Batman to get there, and she stands, nearly hugging the base of the signal, and she leans as far forward as she dares. 

 

The familiar click of the grapple, the whizz of air moving. Steph steps back. Batman lands in front of Gordon, his shape hulking, dark. Steph smiles when she sees him. 

 

Another shape lands next to Batman. It’s not Cass, not graceful enough, and there’s no ears, just the ragged outline of hair. The cape is smaller, and in the light of the signal Steph sees red, sees black. 

 

Sees the little R, stamped on his chest. 

 

_ No. _

 

No. No. 

 

No way, no fucking--no. 

 

Gordon is talking, sound is coming from his body. 

 

“‘Course we will,”  _ he  _ responds, light and airy, his voice like knives, right into her chest. Steph feels frozen, like a statue. She can’t breathe. 

 

She stumbles backwards, nearly tripping over Cass’s cape. She can’t--she can’t--

 

She turns, and she flees. 

 

\----

 

Steph curls up in an alleyway and pulls the mask off her face, taking air in big gulps. There are tears streaming down her face and she remembers Jason’s growl. 

 

_ Replacement.  _

 

Steph wants to laugh but she  _ can’t,  _ she grabs at her hair, holds it in her fists, then she takes a batarang from her belt and slices. She uses the sharp edge, and saws it away, a golden pile falling onto her lap. When she’s done, she stands and shakes all the hair off, then she throws the batarang as far away from her as she can. She hears it lodge into the wall. 

 

Fuck everything. 

 

\----

 

It takes her two days to find them. Two days and her heart is cold and hot at the same time. Her chest is bubbling, rage fueling her. She doesn’t think she’s ever been so mad in her entire life, not even at her dad. 

 

On the second night, while she searches, she remembers the press of Tim’s lips on hers, and she nearly throws up. 

 

Instead, she puts that in a box, with the rest of her Tim stuff, and she keeps moving. 

 

She finds them in an abandoned apartment building, up near the top. Their window overlooks the docks on the east end of town. She disables their security and crawls in through the window. Their stupid safehouse is empty and she surveys it. 

 

Two cots, so many guns, their backpacks against the wall. An array of swords, and a nice computer next to their shitty couch. 

 

It’ll do. 

 

Jason comes back in the house first. He’s wearing body armor and a leather jacket, a red, featureless helmet over his face. 

 

Damian is wearing the same thing but his jacket has an actual hood, pulled up on his head. There’s a sword on his back. 

 

Steph connects the dots. Red Hood. Joker. She thinks she gets the nature of their mission, just a little more. She thinks of the guns and she doesn’t understand, and she thinks of  _ Tim Fucking Drake  _ and she does. 

 

She steps into the light, her arms crossed across her chest. She’s still wearing her own suit, Cass’s cape. 

 

“Who are you,” Jason says, pointing his gun at her. Damian’s sword is out. 

 

Steph takes off her mask. 

 

“I’m back,” she says. “And this time, I want in.”

 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> little bit of a tonal shift, huh? sorry to everyone who thought this was going to be a dead robin's club road trip--not really. 
> 
> anyway, at this point in time i'm thinking two or three more chapters. we'll see! thanks as always for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments/kudos always welcome!


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